


Five Minutes Either Side

by asuralucier



Category: Drive (2011), John Wick (Movies)
Genre: Continental Hotel, Crossover, First Meetings, Game Recognize Game, Los Angeles, M/M, bowling, first time blow job
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-07
Updated: 2019-10-07
Packaged: 2020-10-03 22:50:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20460809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asuralucier/pseuds/asuralucier
Summary: Driver disliked it when he had to work with someone new.





	Five Minutes Either Side

**Author's Note:**

  * For [timbre](https://archiveofourown.org/users/timbre/gifts).

> I love the idea of these two, and tried to write something that wasn't just them staring into space! I hope this suits.

Driver disliked it when he had to work with someone new, but it was nearly an unavoidable thing. The clientele wasn’t steady; sometimes people died, got bored, got locked up, all sorts of things. He also didn’t exactly have an agent to weed out the crazies, so that was something else Driver had to do for himself. 

He’d gotten smarter over time, he thought. But he had to think that. The fact that he had to think that was a little sad, like he was slowly sinking into the Hollywood swamp with no chance of getting out. 

“Do you bowl?” Driver said into his burner, chewing on a toothpick. He had five of those things, which he consistently used in careful rotation depending on how well he knew the client. 

“I’m sorry?” 

Driver never made these calls where they could be traced. Sure, he was usually sitting in this or that diner sipping black coffee and chewing on a toothpick. Sometimes, waitresses would come by to flirt with him. He tried his best to engage them just enough to not be impolite, but then he also had to tread the careful balance between that and making them think he was interested and available. 

“Bowling,” Driver reiterated. “You know, with pins and a heavy ball. You gotta rent like, special shoes.” 

“I thought you just drove,” said the guy at the other end. 

“I’m changing up my protocol. Weed out the weird ones. It’s not driving I have to worry about.” 

The guy, who had said his name was John, and that he knew of Driver through one of his associates named Harry, appeared to be thinking about Driver’s terms judging by a dead-ish silence that had befallen the line. Driver tried to remember a Harry, and found that he couldn’t. Maybe it was better that way. Driver was going to give him five minutes, the same he would do in any other situation, and then hang up. 

“Okay,” said John after a minute or two. “I guess we could go bowling. When and where? I’m on a bit of a clock.” 

“So’s everyone,” Driver said. He gave instructions to an alley off Figueroa and then hung up. The waitress buzzed hopefully around him with a fresh pot and he waved her over.

Call it paranoia, but it wasn’t really paranoia if people were really out to get you. Driver couldn’t remember if he’d read that in one of Manny’s paperbacks or if he’d heard it on the radio while en route somewhere. The alley held league tournaments on Saturday afternoons, which meant it was reliably busy and no one would think to remember two guys. 

Still, in the sea of brightly colored team shirts (some with printed logos) and palpable enthusiasm, Driver thought he spotted John right away. The guy was pretending to sip from a can of soda and also trying to feign some kind of interest in some other guy, an old fat man with a gut, ramble on about how his show dog had actual insurance papers. 

Driver walked up to them and cleared his throat. Maybe it was just his imagination, but he thought John looked relieved. 

“Anyway,” John said to the guy before practically legging it to the other side of the room with Driver in tow. “I hope you get your insurance sorted out.” 

“Insurance,” Driver prompted after they were a safe distance away. 

“Don’t ask, I’m sorry I did. Want anything to drink?” 

“Coffee,” Driver said. “Don’t need anything in it. Just black.” 

John went and ordered him a coffee, came back with a cup that had _biodegradable_ printed on it. Then he looked around. Most of the lanes were taken and it looked as if a fight was breaking out over a possible illegal bowl. Two big security guys were on it. 

“How do you know Harry?” 

“Maybe it’s better you don’t know,” John said. “How do you?” 

“Met him on a movie set once. I drive for movies, but this pays better.” Driver had no clue if he was making that up. 

John was like Driver, in a way that Driver found he was beginning to appreciate. He was good at staring straight ahead, speaking only when he needed to. John’s mouth hardly moved when he asked, “Ever fire a gun?” 

“Nope. It’s not really my thing. What I do is I sit in a car, wait for you. Five minutes either side. More than that, you’re on your own.” 

“Probably won’t even need five minutes,” John said, and took a long swig of his soda. Out of the corner of his eye, Driver watched the man swallow.

John didn’t need five minutes. John needed two and a half - and save the two dead bodies lying near the fire exit of the building he’d come out of - the job was neat and quick. Driver kept waiting for sirens to start blaring behind him or above him but none of that happened. Either John was very good, or he was very lucky. 

Driver almost felt silly, like he was running a taxi service instead of showing off as usual. Driver was not a showy person but he took a certain amount of pride in his work. 

He found himself asking: “Where to?” 

John said, “I thought you said I only had five minutes either side.” 

“As far as I’m concerned, I’m just out for a nice drive; it’s a nice change of circumstance I have to tell you. Gotta earn my keep, right?” 

“I’m not going to say no, I suppose,” John said, after mulling the statement over. “Can you get us to Wilshire Boulevard? There’s a hotel there.”

“I don’t want to use valet parking,” said Driver. He distrusted what he had come to think of as surveilled Big Brother parking, and he liked it even less the idea of someone else being in possession of his car keys.

“Sure you do,” John said; he didn’t say it in a particularly threatening way, but Driver felt it, the oppressive way the words went, wriggling just under into his skin. John leaned over the console and dropped a coin into the valet’s open palm. “It’s fine, George. Just give us a minute.” 

George retreated, coin in hand. Driver had only had glimpsed at it for a second in his periphery, and discerned it to be some kind of foreign currency, but maybe it wasn’t. 

“You better not be trying anything,” said Driver. 

“I’m armed to the teeth. If I wanted to try something I would have already.” John removed a gun from the inside of his jacket and held it out. “Here, just hold on to this.” 

The weight of the metal felt unnaturally heavy in Driver’s hands. For a guy who was around firearms plenty, whether they fired blanks or real deal bullets, he still disliked them. “I said -” 

John shrugged. “It’s Switzerland in there anyhow. If you start anything, you’ll get kicked off the premises. It isn’t too pretty either. George will take good care of your ride. If he doesn’t, then Management will supply you with a new car.” 

“Sounds like somebody speaking from experience,” said Driver, and John didn’t answer.

The hotel was fancy like in the movies. Driver tried to think if it looked familiar, but more or less, people with money all wanted things to look the same. Probably so they could tell like for like.

Where John had stuck out like a sore thumb at the bowling alley, he was obviously at home here. He greeted the concierge by name and collected a key card while passing over another one of those coins. 

Then they went to the bar and Driver let John talk him into a whiskey. A pretty barmaid smiled at him like she was smiling for tips but Driver got the feeling that this was not that kind of place. 

“Relax,” said John when they’d tucked themselves into a corner booth. Even the booths were fancy. Driver ran his fingers over the upholstery and thought it felt like real leather - or at least, pretty convincing fake leather. He made a note to himself to get better at telling the difference. 

“I feel like everyone’s got a gun pointed at me,” said Driver. The bar was not empty, and out of habit, he’d given everybody their fifteen seconds. Some saw him looking, some pretended not to. Either way, Driver felt like he was at a disadvantage, and not being a gambler, he didn’t like these odds. 

“Like I said,” John leaned back in his seat. “Nothing will happen to you.” 

“Because this is Switzerland,” Driver asked as he took a sip of his whiskey. It was good, burned in the way that was different from drinking the cheap stuff that Driver sometimes did, but not often. 

“I was more thinking, it’s because you’re with me.” 

Right on cue, someone across the room nodded at John and John nodded back. 

Driver looked on. “And who are you, John Wick?” 

“I’m the best at what I do,” John said. He said this without any pause, as if it couldn’t be anything but the solemn truth.

Driver had to admit, even if he hadn’t seen the full extent of what John was “good” at, there was something attractive and reassuring about a guy knowing his worth. Driver did too. He tried his best to be that kind of guy. 

After their whiskeys were emptied, John asked if Driver would like another and Driver declined. John took that in stride and asked Driver if he’d like to come up to his room instead. Driver didn’t decline. 

The fact that John Wick was good at and wanted to kneel between Driver’s legs and suck his dick, down to the hilt without any warning was moderately surprising. The sensation of being swallowed into a deep dark warm place made Driver moan and his hips lifted, although John pushed him back down again. And then it became too, quickly enough, not that surprising at all.

Driver was keenly aware that John was choosing to do this, that maybe he was buzzing from the job and wanted to blow off steam. But Driver had a choice too and it was no less of a choice, sitting still, with John’s fingers still digging into his hip. John lapped at him like he was some hungry thing, as if Driver was some kind of -

“Stop thinking,” John said, his dark eyes locked onto Driver’s, and it’s every bit as cavernous and endless as his mouth. 

Driver usually didn’t like being told what to do, but there was something, a surety in John’s voice and his still gaze that belied the rest of this fast moving city. He could slow down now, and let go. Even for a minute. It tipped him just over the edge and Driver came without any sound.

Outside, a series of police sirens were blasting, a cacophonous symphony Driver knew well, but that seemed far away, too. 

Instead of looking down, Driver tilted his eyes up towards the ceiling. John pinched him smartly under his knee. “Does this mean I can call you the next time I’m in town?” 

A smile threatened the edge of Driver’s mouth. He didn’t smile much. “Yeah, I guess you could.”


End file.
